


Hunger

by lurker_writes



Series: Turning Point [1]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon)
Genre: Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Caretaking, F/M, Getting Together, moderately detailed descriptions of injuries, the sex is in ch 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:15:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23448391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurker_writes/pseuds/lurker_writes
Summary: Beyond what drove her to the castle, beyond her quest for knowledge or the simple mask of kind intentions… deep down, Lisa was hungry too.
Relationships: Dracula/Lisa (Castlevania)
Series: Turning Point [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1686817
Comments: 47
Kudos: 153





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Offered largely as an apology to readers of Turning Point, who I know I have left hanging, but I just don't have the emotional bandwidth for the writing and editing of a heavier story right now. In the meantime, may I present to you the prequel of sorts, Drac and Lisa's horny vampire riff on a beauty and the beast tale, as told in three parts?
> 
> And yes, as per the tag, the sex will be in ch 3. I'm sorry. I also ask myself why my smut grows 3000 words of exposition to justify its existence, every single day.

At first, Lisa found herself wondering at the wisdom of coming to _this_ castle, of all places, in search of knowledge. Oh, there was knowledge to be gained – more of it, perhaps, than a person could hope to study in a lifetime.

Nor was the problem the quality of her accommodations. She still wasn’t sure what she expected – a bed in a bare room and a handful of rushlights to read by, or to be locked away as the lord of the castle’s next meal? These things had occurred to her as she traveled, though they failed to stop her. 

Instead, she was taken to a tower bedroom with furnishings suited for a very fine lady indeed. There were heavy shutters over the windows, as was to be expected in a night-thing’s domain. However, once she was shown how to light the lanterns – all powered by lightning! how ingenious! what a marvel! – she found woodwork with lovely carvings of hedges and vines and little creatures both fantastical and not, and stonework engraved with twisting patterns and polished until it gleamed under the light, and fine rugs from the East, a vanity with brightly colored blown-glass bottles of perfumed waters for washing, and polished bone combs gilt along the handles, and a bed that she could touch no corner of when she fell down into it, made up in fine linen over a mattress stuffed with something much softer than straw, and blanket sewed up of many winter rabbits’ furs.

“You may open the shutters,” her host had told her as he shut the door behind him and left her gawping at the finery she’d been given with much the same wonder as she had all of his books and experiments.

By the third week, the wonder had rather dissipated.

The problem was, whenever Dracula was struck by some tome she ought to read or some lesson she ought to hear, he expected to present it to her at that very moment – and he got rather surly if she was anything less than delighted at the prospect.

“Ah, have you had your fill of knowledge already, Lisa from Lupu?” he would ask. “It is a great deal for a human to take in. I shall see you out after my evening meal, then.”

His tone always attempted to imply that she would become his evening meal, but never quite strongly enough that she bothered to believe him.

One evening, he caught her at the dressing table, doing up her hair, still wrapped in the soft woolen shawls and robes he’d given her. After all, when one’s teacher rose at sunset, it was a futile struggle to do otherwise oneself.

She caught his eye in the quite-large mirror – vampires did, it turned out, have reflections. Oh, she could have shattered the whole monstrously expensive thing right over his head, even if she had to haul him down by the beard first so she could reach.

He opened his mouth to tease her into compliance, as always, and the sight of it drove her to a fit of madness and daring even more unprecedented than the one that carried her here.

Enough.

She half-faked a yawn that she covered demurely. “Forgive me, my Lord Dracula, but might I have the time first to properly rouse myself and dress? Break my fast, perhaps? Truly, each and every one of your lectures is an unparalleled delight—” the syrupy quality she lent her voice suggested, instead, ‘go jump off a bridge’ “—but I am only a feeble human, and must fortify myself for the intellectual rigors you rightly demand of me.”

If anyone had ever rebuffed him in such a manner before, it had been a long, long time ago. He stood in the doorway, head tilted, brow quirked, fangs peeking from behind his parted lips, looking very much like a wolf confused by confrontation with a particularly furious weasel.

It would not do to laugh in her host’s face.

“When you are dressed, you will attend me in the lower library. Follow the lit lamps. Your meal will be served there. I expect you not to tarry.”

He swept away in a flurry of black cloak that was not intentionally so much as unavoidably dramatic, she thought.

She congratulated herself on a situation well-handled and returned to fixing her hair.

It was only when she was halfway through her plait that she realized – she was no longer bargaining from a disadvantaged position. She desired his knowledge, and he…

He desired her company.

Her fingers slowed as she loosely wove her hair together. She didn’t quite have an explanation for the way her heart thudded behind her ribs, but she feared it would draw him back up her tower.

He told her not to tarry, but she needed to compose herself first. Perhaps she would chance the time to wash, even if quickly? He said not to tarry, but generally approved of good hygiene. Yes, wash and dress and… Even if the clothes were new and less familiar to her, these were easy enough tasks to accomplish while immersed in her thoughts.

That her meal would be served to her was a new riddle to solve, as so far she had been given run of the kitchen and provided with some food stores, but generally left to fend for herself.

She was no more prepared for the answer to her question than Dracula had been for her new bout of cheek this eventide.

She found him in the lower library, yes, seated in his favorite chair as though it were the throne she’d caught a glimpse of, cloak pooled about his feet in a spill of shadows, examining his claws and sharpening the edges with that of his thumb.

Along with Dracula, she found her meal set out for her – a small golden-brown bun that shined across the top and smelled strongly of butter, a soft goat cheese topped with leaves of dill, a pottage of beans and bacon, little silvery fish preserved in oil and drizzled with a sorrel sauce, a jar of quince preserves, a selection of honeyed fruits and dainty shaped marzipans, a cup and a small jug of bragă and…

She had absolutely no idea what was in the little cup, but it was darker than wine and smelled smoky, spiced, and delightful.

She took a tiny sip, just to test. Bitter-sweet and spicy, like nothing she’d tasted before.

Dracula watched her with a pleased little turn to his lips and a glint in his eyes. “Qahwah or kahve, as they call it in Arabia, where it’s prized by scholars for its energizing qualities. Now, will this do to fortify you, Lisa from Lupu? As I’ve remembered several old experiments on the growth and formation of bone that a learned woman ought to know thoroughly.”

“Yes.” She perched on the edge of the seat opposite him and drew a plate to her without looking properly, too distracted by the promise of knowledge to be distracted by the unexpected bounty. “Yes, it will.”

* * *

Knowledge could not stay Lisa's only distraction, not after the months she'd lived in the wonder of this castle. She should have paid more attention to her experiment and less to _him_.

Maybe then, she would have realized that she’d reached for the wrong tube.

Instead, the thing shattered in her hand, shards of glass biting deep into her palm and the inside of her fingers. She barely had time to gasp in pain, more a shocked breath than a cry.

Dracula was upon her in an instant.

He drew her hand away from where she’d instinctively held it to her chest and gently uncurled her fingers.

There were pieces of glass stuck deep into her flesh. She choked on a sob. She’d seen people lose use of their hands, and sometimes the hand itself, from wounds like this. That was what she wanted to prevent. Could she manage as a doctor with only one hand?

“Shh, Lisa.” Dracula held her hand in one of his own, large enough to cradle it entirely in his palm and pin her fingers back with his thumb. With the other, he caught a piece of glass between his sharp claws and carefully drew it free. “Shhh. Naught but a few cuts.”

She blinked away tears as he removed all the glass. He found several slivers too small for her to even see. Blood welled up and ran over the edges of the wounds left behind until it began pooling in her palm.

“Now let’s see, hm?” He dabbed the blood away with a soft square of linen that he’d pulled from somewhere in his clothing.

She hissed between her clenched teeth. In more than one spot, the slices went beyond the pink and red of skin and meat, to the yellow of fat and the white of bone. At least, that was what she imagined from the brief glimpse she saw before the blood flooded over again.

“Ah.” He bowed his head, his whole enormous frame curling down over her opened palm.

She expected the hot touch of breath against her skin, but… but he didn’t breathe like she did, and he wasn’t warm. Instead, she felt the brief tickle of his beard, and then—

His lips were soft. Cool, but not cold. His teeth, those sharp fearsome things, were as smooth across the front as the polished bone comb in her bedroom.

A strange hot-cold tingling gathered in her palm and spread, down into her fingers and up into her arms, too pleasant to be called numbness as it flowed back up her veins.

His tongue was rough, and also cool – or maybe it was just that she suddenly felt so very warm, overwhelmingly warm.

She teased him about living as a man but she had never properly considered him as one, not until now. His mouth was on her skin and she was suddenly aware of him as a physical presence, a creature of flesh and blood and bone and hunger and not merely intellect and shadow.

His tongue curled between her fingers, following the rivulets of blood that ran down to drip from her knuckles.

Was she a good meal? Did she satisfy him?

Oh, she hoped so, because she felt as though she hadn’t been aware of food until his lips touched her skin, and now she was desperate and starving.

His tongue pressed against her palm once more, flat and broad. His nose brushed against her wrist, where she was sure her pulse fluttered madly. He heaved a sigh that she felt rather than heard, and then he drew away, unfolding himself once more to his full and towering height.

She had to lean back on her heels to see him fully. There was a rim of red along the inside of his bottom lip, and she’d left a bloody thumbprint on his cheek. He was… imposing. Magnificent.

He studied her with a critical eye, and tilted her chin up with a gentle press of his hand. She felt only the backs of his fingers, his claws curled under so he would not harm her.

There was a storm in her head and a fire in her belly.

“I may have pushed too hard,” he mused. He took her by the arm and led her over to the chair tucked away in the corner, hidden by the cases of exotic plantlife. His chair, huge and lavishly upholstered, that she had never presumed to sit in. He guided her into it, somehow, though he didn’t push her down.

Her hand had stopped hurting from the moment his lips touched her. It was only when she looked at it that she realized he’d done rather more than clean the blood away. Her palm and fingers were dappled with spots of tender pink, like new skin from under a scab though no scabs had formed. The wounds were gone. She flexed her tingling fingers. All of them bent smoothly and slowly.

“Did you… heal me?”

“…I did.” He knelt before her and took her chin in his hand once more, slowly turning her head from side to side. He pressed the pad of his thumb into her cheek, just hard enough that she knew it would blanch. Despite the force, she still felt only his skin and not the bite of his claws.

He sat back on his heel and let her go. “Your pulse is fast, but you seem otherwise unharmed. Your blood flow is fine, and there should be no risk of further burns. Stay here, I will bring you water and something to eat.”

“What did you do?” She asked the broad shape of his cloaked shoulders as he turned away from her. “With your… vampire blood magic?”

She couldn’t quite keep the wry turn from her voice.

She _resented_ magic, in an entirely petty way. So much of her life until now spent on understanding the logic of the world, only to find there truly was some kernel of truth within all those superstitions. And _that_ truth turned on entirely different logic, alongside and apart from the rules of the world that she knew. At times, entirely in contradiction of them! And all of it arbitrary and exclusive – this spell works on _this_ language no human speaks any longer, and that enchantment on _that_ one, and neither can be worked in the other because… that is simply the way it is. She had no patience for it. A scientific remedy _worked_ , no matter the language it had been recorded in or the— the _phase of the moon_ when it was applied.

He glanced back at her. “I encouraged the flesh to grow. I deadened the pain.”

She ran her fingers over her mended palm. “That seems an odd skill, for creatures that are said to delight in their prey’s suffering.”

“A soothed mark makes for a peaceful meal.”

He stalked away.

To feed her. To tend to her. To care for her.

What a wonder, that she found herself here.

She knew that, if he’d wished it, he’d have torn her throat open on that first evening and she would have died – with her dagger in his ribs, surely, but died all the same.

All of the stories were so terribly mistaken. Blood was not the hunger that drove Vlad Țepeș in his choices.

She traced all of the lines on her palm and chased the memory of his lips against her skin.

 _Live like a man_. She had been so terribly mistaken.

Oh, she had never met such a man in all of her life.

_Soft cool lips, fangs smooth like ivory, well-groomed beard, gentle touch, rough tongue—_

Lisa was hungry, too.


	2. Chapter 2

“Spend tomorrow night and the next day as you wish,” he told her, perhaps a fortnight after that enlightening debacle in the laboratory. “I’ve some business to attend.”

She peered up at him from where she sat, all curled up with her stocking feet on the seat and one of his priceless volumes of anatomy diagrams in her lap – very improper. He never seemed to care.

“Don’t… wander,” he added haltingly, his rich voice taking a soft and low turn.

She used her finger to mark her place on the rendering of the bones of the wrist – true to size – and looked up at him more fully. “Why would I wander, when the manuscripts are all here?”

“Why do you do anything?”

The way he asked – she wondered if she imagined it, but he sounded… very fond.

“I’m moving the castle tonight,” he added. “Don’t be shocked.”

“Oh, so I at last can escape from your forest of horrors? I will enjoy the chance to open the—” She drew up short. If the castle moved, any portion might be any direction depending on where it was located. “...The front windows on the long hall, and not be greeted by your very particular excesses.”

He crossed his arms across his chest – his very broad, very deep chest, as she could not help but notice – like a sulky child. “If you found the sight so appalling, you might not have wandered through them.”

Absentmindedly, she pulled her braid down her shoulder so that it curved against her neck. “The only appalling thing here continues to be your manners.” She glanced back down at the diagram she studied, and the labelling in a spiky hand that somehow managed to be both cramped and miniscule at the same time. “And your penmanship.”

“You are a very odd woman, Lisa.”

“I must be,” she agreed, “to enjoy your company, as you are an exceptionally peculiar man.”

He made a hasty retreat after that, though she thought – and it truly should not have warmed her so but, oh, it did – that she caught a glimpse of his face, both flustered and delighted, as he left.

Though she’d been flippant with him, she did steal away one last time to the windows of the long hall and look out on Dracula’s forest of the dead. What madness, what desperate fit of courage or cruelty, had brought these people forth to _this_ castle, to _this_ lord?

Lisa did not know even a sliver of all there was to know about Vlad Dracula Țepeș, but she was quite certain of three things. The tales she followed came from the memory of parents and grandparents; the castle had been here a long time. Once, certainly, Dracula had hunted the countryside; those tales were old, too – he’d shut himself away from the world, and this was the first he ever spoke of leaving to her. And lastly, the bodies were not as old as the stories.

These people followed the stories, just as she had, and this was what became of them.

Had they come in a trickle, banging on the doors at sunset, to be greeted and devoured by the king of the night beasts?

Or had they come in a mob in the bright of the day?

It was a terrible thing to behold in the moonlight, this field of skeletons standing sentinel, clacking and rattling and falling slowly to pieces in the wind. There was a vicious efficiency to the scene – so many lost lives, rotting away to the open air. But the brutality of it was honest, and for that she found it less disgusting than she might.

It wasn’t as though she hadn’t seen the like before, murderers and rapists and thieves and, of course, _witches,_ all struck down and stuck through in what the local rulers called justice.

If this was what became of them, one mob or many, intent to steal inside with the bright sun for cover and burn the night-king in his bed… Well, it was not so shocking.

Brutal. Ghastly. Cruel.

But not shocking.

A perfect world wouldn’t need to be woken to kindness.

* * *

The day and the night and the day again, and sunset found Lisa anticipating Dracula’s – Vlad’s? was it too familiar, even if only to herself? – return, feeling both eager and fitful.

To be alone in this castle that, however beautiful and full of marvels, was still a tomb – it weighed on her, even after only two days. There was an endless variety of ways to amuse herself, tasks to busy herself with. Glass cases of foreign flowers to marvel over and sketch. Conservatories of herbs for both food and medicine she could pick and prepare, and one with precious oranges she’d been told she was welcome to. An extensive poisoner’s garden, should morbid curiosity take her. Galleries of paintings and statues and tapestries – a few, secreted in an out of the way corner, that were clearly paintings and sketches of Vlad, old little things in modest frames that had a sense of intimacy about them, something tender and private in the way the artist captured the turn of his head or the glint of his eye or the peek of a fang behind an arrogant grin.

She wondered at the hand that had made these portraits. Who had it been that captured the lord of the castle so fondly and so dearly and so long ago? And where had they gone?

Everywhere she looked, she found much the same – the relics of stories already done with. All around her, little mementos heavy with the weight of the past.

Alone, the air of the castle was oppressive, haunted by something less tangible than the forces Dracula reigned.

She turned her steps to the kitchen. It was small, modest, something like familiar.

It… had rather a lot of crates and sacks and baskets stacked upon the table that were not there before. A whole leg of smoked ham. One sad apple that had rolled to the floor.

The door down into the undercroft was open, and there was a great deal of splashing and hissing carrying through the vaults and up the stairs. That was Vlad, surely? Although significantly less composed than she expected of him.

…Best to be sensible. She grabbed a knife.

The commotion was easy enough to follow, down a sloped hall and through the open archway into the scullery.

Both big copper pots were steaming away. The valve on the waterspout had been thrown wide open and the basin was overflowing and spilling down the floor to the drains. The big wooden washtub – which was for laundry and emergencies, _I do have plumbed baths, Lisa, there’s no need to live like an animal_ – was out on the floor.

And rather more importantly than all of that, Dracula was in it.

His clothes were not. His clothes were a sodden black mass trailing all across the floor, punctuated by his blood-splattered white shirt hanging limp over the edge of the washbasin in violent exclamation.

He didn’t immediately react to her presence, and she wasn’t entirely sure whether she should leave or approach.

In her observation, his skin, though it had a grey cast, still had a slight translucence about it – like a bit of polished agate.

There were massive chalky-white patches across his shoulders where the skin flaked and, in some thankfully few spots, smoked or steamed.

“Now is not the moment, Lisa,” he grunted, which at least answered whether or not he was aware of her, as he scooped up water from the tub to splash in his face.

He shook the water off and grimaced, open-mouthed, at the ceiling. The water that dripped down from his nose and his eyes first became bloodstained, and then simply became blood.

That settled another matter – she intended to heal people, and now was the moment.

She was halfway across the room when he seized a jug from the far side of the washtub and dumped it over his head.

He immediately hissed and spluttered and dropped the jug, where it shattered on the floor. He paid it no mind, much too busy wiping all the spilled blood off his face with his forearms. It ran down his neck and dripped from his beard and splattered across his chest.

“Ugh, no, _buck_ ,” he hissed, still scrubbing at his eyes.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Deer’s blood.” He groped blindly around on the floor, hand just missing a second jug. “I need—”

She knelt down and nudged it forward into his grip. Her focus was entirely on the splotches of burned white spread across his face beneath the smears of red.

He first dipped a finger into this jug to sample it and deem it correct before he also poured it across his eyes, rather more carefully than the last. He used the back of his thumb and his knuckles to rub the blood into his skin, much the same way she might use the pads of her fingers.

Finally, he blinked his eyes open against the sticky gore painted across his face. They were entirely red. Iris, sclera, vibrant like blood and rubies.

“Lisa…” he said, both chiding and questioning, his expression caught somewhere between an animal snarl and a human grimace.

She became once more aware of the face that he was undressed, sitting in a washtub – and there was rather more of him than there was of the tub. One of his legs was hooked over the side. The other was crammed in somehow, his knee folded rather pathetically high up to his chest.

She wet her fingers in the water and wiped a small patch of blood from his face. The chalkiness was receding from the skin underneath. “You’re hurt.”

“Lisa.” This time, he was entirely chiding. Or perhaps, trying to scare her off.

That hadn’t worked on her yet.

“What did this?”

She touched just at the edge of a marred patch on his arm, and he bared all his teeth in a loud hiss of discomfort.

“Some bright young acolyte of the Belmonts with a death wish and a bucket of holy water. I can deal with this myself.”

“No.” She looked around at the things haphazardly scattered before her, probably all tossed about while he was… blinded? Had he been entirely blinded? “I want to be a doctor. I want to heal people. It appears I’ll start with you.”

He scoffed, then dipped his own hand in the water to wipe some of the clotting mess from his face. “There is no medicine here. Only vampire magic. Go back to your books, Lisa, and leave an old monster to lick his wounds in peace.”

“I will not! Do you truly think that I’d leave _anyone_ in such a state? Let alone you, who—”

“Lord Dracula, I—”

Lisa whipped around. There was a young man in the archway – no, grey skin, bright eyes, pointed ears under shaggy brown hair and lips pursed in surprise over fangs. There was another vampire in the archway, much less imposing than her vampire and dressed in the slightly shabby finery of a lesser merchant.

“I’ve brought in all the goods you required, my lord. Might I— might your hospitality—” his eyes flicked over her hungrily “—extend to a drink? My lord?”

Vlad – _Lord Dracula_ – raked his claws up the side of the washtub, scoring first the wood and then the metal fittings alike with an awful screech.

“Get out,” he said, quietly, calmly, pronunciation crisp in a way that bared his teeth like a promise.

“I—” the other vampire gasped tremulously, a nervous break in his voice stretching one syllable to three.

“Do not presume to find yourself worthy of that which you consider as mine.” Temper sharpened Vlad’s voice into a finely edged blade and made him bite at the consonants of his speech. “Crawl back into your burrow and hope that _I_ do not reconsider the night’s generosity and _burn you down to ash and bone myself_.”

The other backed away several shaky steps before turning tail and fleeing.

Vlad tilted his head and listened. Lisa daren’t move until the tension fell from his shoulders. While she waited, she mulled over what was said. Finally, the taught line of his shoulders dropped and he breathed in just to heave a little sigh.

Gingerly, she touched her fingers to the bare, unmarred skin of his arm. “Now tell me what I do to heal this.”

He considered her for a moment like he was going to tell her, once more, to leave him be – and then his arm shifted under her hand and he glanced away. “Drain one of the coppers into a bucket and then mix it with earth from that sack until you’ve made a thin mud.”

“You intend to put hot mud on burns?!”

“It is beyond the reach of your medicine to mend a vampire’s ills,” he told her, almost with a grin. “Do as I say, or return to your studies.”

She scoffed, but she did mix the mud. “Then I suppose I must, as I have no idea how you’ll get out of that.”

It was a mistake to steal a peek at his bare chest, because instead she caught his eye. He was giving her the same weighty once-over he had when she’d first rounded on him and scolded him for his poor welcome.

“With more grace than I got in it, I assure you.” He splashed a few cupped palm-fulls of water across his face to rinse away the setting crust of blood.

“…You protected him and took a dunking yourself, didn’t you?” She pulled her sleeves up and worked the mixture with both hands.

“ _You_ required a great deal of provisioning, and as a gratitude for the service, I settled the matter of an overly enthusiastic hunter that had been stalking the area.”

“You can’t fool me. You’re much too old and wily to be surprised by a bucket of water.”

A series of strange little flicks of emotion passed across his face before it settled into blank stillness. “A lesser vampire than me would have been burned to nothing.”

She was struck by dual horrors – the thought of waiting in this mausoleum for a reunion that never came, and the idea that he might… There were surely many who believed the world would be improved without him in it; but she thought of his quick wit and his peculiar humor and the way he took in a pushy woman with nothing but herself to offer and asked for nothing but her diligence instead, and found she could not agree.

“You aren’t… hurt badly, are you?”

The red was starting to fade from the whites of his eyes. “Nothing that cannot be healed.”

“ _Good_ ,” Lisa said, with a fervor that seemed to surprise the both of them.

“Add the blood from that jug,” he said after a long moment of silence.

She reached for the one he pointed to, the one he’d coated his face with. “This one? Does it truly matter which?”

Even the vagaries of magic were easier to ponder than the absence of him, and less hazardous to ponder than the… the presence of him.

He scrubbed at his beard. “It matters because one is from the buck I hung in the larder for you, and the other is the blood of a virgin—”

She fumbled the jug and nearly let it shatter on the stone floor. She didn’t know they could… taste… that…

“—which has restorative properties.”

She poured the last of it into the mixture with considerably more care. She wasn’t sure how to feel – the jug of blood in her hands was not wholly unlike the paintings she’d found. _Who were you_? she wondered. _Did you live, did you die?_

What became of this person, beyond this tragic relic?

“Do vampires often choose virgins as their prey?” It was a guarded question.

Dracula studied her intently. “Certainly, some do,” he answered slowly. “And some keep humans they have chosen for the role, as blood-brides and concubines and pets. But I have never had the taste for it. I prefer to feed from those that have crossed me. When I hunt, it is for hunters.”

“That’s…” She turned it over in her mind while her fingers worked in a muck of dirt and blood. What was that, truly? “Fair, I suppose.”

“Is it?”

“They do mean to kill you, much as you mean to kill them. I could – perhaps I should – beg you to be kinder and better than them, but I…” She stared down at her hands, covered in the blood and filth of a vampire remedy, and worried at her lip.

“That is ready.” He held out one of his great clawed hands, strong and sharp enough to slice into metal and yet she knew his touch could be deft and gentle as well.

“No, I’ll do it.” She hefted up the bucket and carried it over to kneel behind him, heedless of the blood-tinged water soaking into her skirts. “Like a salve?”

“Yes.”

She scooped up a handful of the mud, warm and unpleasantly sticky, and smeared it across his bare shoulders where the damage was the worst and the skin scarcely resembled skin anymore so much as the ashen remains of charred wood. He shuddered under her touch like a stallion shaking off a fly.

For a long stretch, she worked in silence. He relaxed slowly under her hands. It must have hurt terribly, this thing that was done to him. At some point, he unwedged his leg from the tub and hooked it over the side as well – as he was no longer using it to shield himself from her, she realized. It was peculiar to think of a night creature being modest.

She followed a particularly bad patch up his throat to his jaw. The skin there had all cracked and split. “Lean back.”

He didn’t.

“This goes all down your chest. Lean back.” She rested her fingertips on his shoulder and used just the slightest pressure. It was surprising how much there give was to him when he was warm and relaxed, soft skin and pliable muscle, when to sight he seemed like so much carven stone. “Allow me to do this for you.”

Slowly – very slowly – he followed the suggestion of her touch. She drew him down until his head rested on her breast and his damp hair soaked through her gown and into her smock.

He looked up at her with an expression that was… conflicted, but otherwise unreadable.

She wiped her hand on her skirts – what did it matter, these clothes were already ruined – and brushed a wavy black lock away from his face. “I don’t want to see you hurt,” she admitted.

He closed his eyes. The way his smile curled spoke of pain. “You would lose your teacher.”

She took another handful of mud and smoothed it down the curve of his shoulder and across his broad chest. He had no heartbeat. Yet… something within him seemed to thrum with energy, some mysterious animating force.

“…I would lose more than that, I think.”

It was strange to feel him draw in a great breath after his perfect stillness.

“You are here to study, Lisa. I am not keeping you. You are not a blood-bride or a concubine or a _pet_. So there is no need to flatter me and earn your life with false care or devotion. I put no claim on it.”

She dared to lay her other hand on his shoulder as well. There he was, magnificent creature, with his head pillowed on her chest, loosely encircled in her arms.

“Could you have forgotten how I came to you, with nothing but dreams and demands? You already know me for a pushy, profligate woman; and I have never regretted the friends I did not make for it. Vlad…”

He looked up at her with those eyes that were so obviously not human, rich like polished carnelian. She ran her fingers along his jaw.

“I have never done a thing I didn’t wish to, and I won’t be starting now. I can only hope, as any person does, that you might also hold me dear. That we might…”

“The hunter tonight,” he said – low, rough. “I crushed his throat in a single bite.”

She frowned down at him. “He aimed to kill you. I know you wouldn’t do the same to me.”

“I don’t. That is the truth of me – the creature that I am.”

There was a pained cast to his face that she did not think had anything to do with his wounds. It caused a sympathetic ache in her chest. Oh, she couldn’t stand to see him hurting.

“If you do not care for me, then you do not care for me, and that is fine. If you think I’m just a foolish human—”

“ _No._ ”

“But please don’t speak so cruelly of the man I’d give my heart to. He’s lonely enough, I think, without a critic he could never escape.”

He turned his head to the side and rested his cheek upon her chest. “I do care for you – and so, if you suffered at my hand… I don’t know that I would ever forgive myself.”

She tucked his hair behind his pointed ear. She wanted so very much to run her finger up to the tip, just to feel, to build a new map of that which was surpassingly handsome for her mind and her hands – but it would be too much, too quickly. Too presumptuous an imposition, even for her.

“But you haven’t hurt me. You didn’t bite me even with my wrist at your lips and my blood in your mouth. Don’t lie and say you couldn’t have.”

“I could have. I wanted to.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

He scowled – very nearly a pout. “You deserve a better end than my teeth in your neck.”

“Well then it’s very convenient that you can mend such a wound with a kiss and a whisper.”

“I—” He pressed his palm to his face and righted himself somehow, water sloshing about his hips and—

She pursed her lips and felt herself flush. _No, think less about his hips_.

“Allow me time to think on it. Please,” Vlad sighed.

“Yes. If that’s what you want.” She stood slowly, with her own little grunt of human exertion. Her skirts were completely sodden, spotted and smeared with blood and mud. What a paragon of beauty she was. Still… She dared to bend a little and press her lips to his temple, just above his ear.

He caught her by the hand. They folded well together, hers and his – fit like they belonged.

“If I decline… know that it is still because I care for you.”

She squeezed his fingers in her grasp. “If you care for me, respect that I know my own mind and consider your happiness as well.”

He looked at her like he’d never seen such a creature before. Gently, he pulled on her hand and drew her to him until she bent at the waist and they were eye to eye. Slow enough that she had every opportunity to turn away, he leaned in and kissed the corner of her lips, soft and sweet.

“Let me think on it,” he said once more.

She slipped her fingers from his grasp, cupped his jaw in both hands, and stared the lord of all shadows directly in the eyes before she kissed him with neither fear nor regret.

“Think well,” she told him.

And so, with her quarry stunned completely, she turned and left.

* * *

There was something out of place on the kitchen table amidst all the general sundries needed to support a mortal life, she noted as she passed.

A pair of new gloves in finely stitched leather, cut just to size for her hands.

Perfect for working with chemicals.

She brushed her thumb across her lips.

_Think well_ , she silently pled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was nice to write something in which these two could finally, finally properly communicate.
> 
> Go ahead, Vlad. Think real hard.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for any errors that have escaped me, it is late and I am tired.

Vlad spent the next few evenings avoiding her, though Lisa kept stubbornly to her newly nocturnal schedule.

Honestly, day or night were only relevant to scholarly work in that she needed light to read by, and the lights of Dracula’s castle were as eternal as its master. There was no sense in staying up long enough to sleep at night and wake at day once more, only to have to reverse the whole process again when he gave her his answer. He _would_ give her his answer.

…She dearly hoped for his answer.

She took to leaving notes for him at the door to his study, scrawled in charcoal on scraps of ruined parchment. He inevitably drifted back there at some time before sunrise, when he vanished like mist to some point unknown deep within the castle’s depths.

They were never lovelorn things, these notes of hers. _‘Require more caustic potash. Please leave at my usual worktable.’ ‘The writing desk in the lower library is out of ink and I cannot find any oak galls.’ ‘Please provide a formula for the treatment I applied to you. Wish to record it in my journal of studies.’_

But they were all answered, her petty little requests, though never with that which she truly wished for – his attention.

She frowned down at the response to her latest – an aged sheet of vellum inscribed in his crabbed, spiky hand, the ink less faded halfway down the page.

> _For Scalds Inflicted by the method of Consecration_
> 
> _Take one measure of soil from an unconsecrated grave, collected on a moonless night (well sieved) and mix with an equal measure of still water until there is formed a soft paste. Add to this a quarter-measure of blood from a virgin, taken while the heart still beats. Apply as a poultice and allow to dry. Repeat until flesh is hydrated and pliant._
> 
> _The graves of those buried as witches have yielded the best results in all of my experimentations, particularly accused infanticides. The required purity of the blood component remains suspect; there may be some other alchemy at work which remains undiscovered. A chaste priest offered poor returns. As of yet, an unripe Belmont has rendered the greatest effect._

Was this an attempt to ward her off? It was a poor one, if he thought it would work after she’d already spread the muck all across his shoulders. He was bathing in blood, of course the underlying methods and ingredients were going to be… unsavory.

She copied the formula down, without any additional remarks of her own. She saved those for the note she left when she returned the page – _‘I’ve found a flaw in your experimental process. The church is overwhelmingly peopled with charlatans. Who is to say your priest had not just left his mistress?’_

If he would not come to her, she hoped it would at least make him laugh.

* * *

It was not too many more evenings before she got her wish.

Vlad continued to evade her, so she settled down for her vigil in his study and waited in his chair, a compendium on her lap and her feet tucked up underneath her, as was her way.

She must have dozed at some point in the night, as she awoke to a large, cool hand cradling her cheek.

Vlad crouched before her, cast in deep shadows by the dying fire at his back. 

She blinked sleepily at him. “Did you think on it?”

“I did.”

She turned her face into his hand, which was like a pleasant balm after falling asleep too close to the heat of the hearth. “Well, don’t torment me any further. I’ve missed you.”

Some sentiment softened the harsh lines of him. “I’ve missed you as well. I have often sat in that chair and stared at the walls longer than we’ve been apart. And yet, I missed you.”

She tried to reach for him, but he turned his head away from her touch.

“You care for me, Lisa?”

“Yes. Deeply.”

“You would love a vampire?” His sharp eyes roved over her face, studying her intently. “You would lay with a vampire?”

That was the core of the matter, wasn’t it?

This wasn’t a quick tumble with that pretty chemist boy that showed her a few of his formulas and then later condescended to say that she would make a fair assistant if he deigned to take her as his wife, or the dissectionist with the clever hands who wanted to give her his heart, but only the one he kept in a jar. She’d ranged far in her worldly, indecent quest for knowledge, but never so far as this.

Vlad Dracula Țepeș stood as a singular creature, beyond the reach or reckoning of even his own kind.

But not beyond hers.

She brushed aside his hair and tucked it behind his ear, this time following her desire to trace the point of it and map out the shape of him until he was no longer strange or foreign to her touch.

“ _This_ vampire, yes. If he would have me.” She trailed her fingers along his jaw. “If he also wishes it.”

He leant into her touch. _I do, I do wish it_ , he said without words. “There are conditions.” That was what he said aloud.

“Oh?”

“Stay with me.”

“You know I can’t stay here.”

His lips began to curl into a defensive snarl, and her heart broke for him, just a little bit, that he assumed betrayal so readily.

“Everything I’ve learned is wasted if I never go out and use it. I can’t stay shut away in your fortress forever. But leaving here needn’t mean leaving you.” She reached for his hands. “Come with me,” she haggled – she hoped it was an attractive enough counter-offer. “Bar your great doors and leave with me when I go. Live out in the world with me for a time – together, as men and women do.”

“Go dwell in a dirt-floored hut with you while you waste your skills on ungrateful peasants?” But still, he sounded intrigued.

“Would it be so terrible, the two of us? We needn’t stay in one place long. I rarely find I’m welcomed. We could travel. A doctor and a surgeon, perhaps?”

“You want me to go be a surgeon for humans?” he asked, this time plainly mirthful.

She was winning.

“Why not? I’ve seen some shocking butcheries under the blades of supposedly skilled men – and then the poor patients died anyway, burnt through with fever and full of pus. Could you not cleanly take a limb, or trepan a skull, or slice free a malignant growth? Could you not do it better than any man alive?”

“Of course I could,” he scoffed.

And then she saw in his eyes that they _both_ knew she’d won.

“There is one more thing,” he said before she could begin to celebrate her success.

He pulled a mess of leather straps and metal plate from the shadows of his cloak and dropped it into her lap where it landed with a clank and a thud in a heap on her open book. Cautiously, she untangled it and spread it out.

“To bind a prisoner’s jaws closed,” Vlad explained flatly.

Suddenly, she understood and the thing took terrible shape. A muzzle of perforated metal and belts to fasten it around the head. A solid bar to fit beneath the chin and hold the jaw in place.

“This is—”

“A device made solely to stop a vampire biting.”

“No.” She shook the thing in his face. “This is cruel and absurd, and I won’t be part of it.”

He stood and stepped back from her in one smooth motion. “Then I must refuse you.”

“Because I trust you?” she demanded.

“You _trust_ me.” Vlad loomed down over her, a massive shadow backlit by the last glow of the embers. He seized the book and tossed it carelessly aside, then took her hand and tugged her to her feet. “Clever Lisa. _Foolish_ Lisa.”

He shifted around her, an intangible thing of magic and shadows, until he pressed close behind with her hand still clasped in his own. His other hand curled ‘round her middle and he scratched his claws lightly over the wool of her dress.

He bent to press his cheek against hers and speak next to her ear. “How can you trust me—”

She was jerked backward through the air.

He’d sat himself down and pulled her with him, and now she was splay-legged on his lap, his hand on her belly holding him tight to her chest.

“—when I do not trust myself?”

He nosed at her jaw, just under her ear. Despite the way they were pressed together, despite her wish to be as close to him as she could, some primal thing within her narrowed her entire perception of him down to lips-tongue- _teeth_.

“You want us to be stripped to nothing together,” he spoke into her racing pulse. “Down to our basest instincts. Humans might like to _fuck_ …”

She couldn’t help but gasp.

“…but vampires like to _feed_.” And his lips parted against her neck so she could feel the long, slow slide of his fangs on her skin as his jaw opened wider and wider and—

There were two sharp points pressed over her pulse and she sat transfixed, trembling under the terrible weight of his thirst.

He withdrew with a weary sigh and gently pushed her from his lap to stand on her own two unsteady feet.

She looked down at the— the _muzzle_ still hanging from her white-knuckled fist. Her heart was hammering against her ribs. She could still feel the phantom press of his touch against her.

She was incredibly slick between her thighs.

“This is a temporary solution at best,” she insisted, turning the hateful thing over in her hands.

Vlad sat with his chin propped on one open palm, slumped like the weight of all his long years crushed down upon him.

“I’m sorry. You’re right,” she pressed on when he didn’t respond, “that perhaps we might need to… take precautions, if only at first. But let’s not assume disaster before we even start.”

His only answer was a questioning tilt of his head.

She drew her skirts out of her way and resumed her place on his lap with an outward daintiness she did not feel at all. What she felt was slightly mad with power, seated primly sidesaddle atop a fearsome dragon as she was.

“We’ll do a few experiments,” she promised him, leaning into his shoulder and staring into his eyes, undaunted.

His hand slid across her back, halting and uncertain, to curl around her hip.

“We’ll see how the— how the _urge_ takes you.”

“Suddenly and fiercely.” His voice was a wry rumble.

She squirmed a bit on her seat, unable to help herself. Beneath her, he shifted one of his legs to widen the space between his knees.

“You’re usually so collected,” she told him in a whisper. “Like now.”

He lifted his head from his palm and leaned back into the support of his chair. “I am a touch away from unraveling entirely.”

There was just nothing else she could do in the face of a statement like that – she slid her hand up his chest, all along the fine fabric of his clothing until she could slip her fingers up under his cloak.

“If it’s like this, like now… you could bite a little, if you want. I wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t mind.”

“I might enjoy it,” she admitted. “I like your lips on my skin.”

He just looked at her for a long moment, something unfathomably tender in his gaze. Finally, he pulled her hand from underneath his cloak and pressed a kiss to her curled fingers.

“Oh, you are a sly old beast,” she laughed lightly, before she laid her head on his shoulder and tucked her face into his neck. “I think I might like it.”

* * *

It would have been less daunting to simply tumble into bed with him, however, they both agreed that their… _endeavor_ … may require a bit more foresight and preparation. He should be well-fed, as close to the moment as possible. She was struck by the urge to first wash every bit of herself, like a maiden bound for the altar – though she was no maiden, and there was no altar. The next night, they decided together – haltingly, falteringly, each struck with nerves. Still, they reached their accord.

The next night.

She questioned him on where his meals came from when he did not hunt – how it was preserved, where it was all stored, how it should be prepared… what manner of blood pleased him best.

He made mention of the castle’s new location – the nearest town, the lay of the hills and roads and streams… the hour he intended to rise.

* * *

Lisa rose in the late afternoon, thrumming with nervous energy, head full of a plan.

She located the rest of the buck’s blood. She had no wish to sugarcoat what she was doing, she was in no denial – the man she gave her heart to was Dracula, and she did not mean to hide from his nature. She merely had doubts about how well she could kiss him with another person’s blood fresh on his tongue.

Her own… well, that was a different matter. She was no sheltered lady. She’d bloodied her nose. She’d split her lip. She was familiar enough with the taste of her own blood.

She took an exceptionally long time bathing – partially out of nerves, perhaps, but mostly just to luxuriate in pure white soap and perfumed balms and oils and inexhaustible hot water that she didn’t have to haul in a bucket.

That night, she meant to lay with a great prince. Until then, just this once, she would indulge in indolence and laze about like a decadent queen from fallen Rome. She was a woman with a purpose. Rarely did she see a chance to worry herself with the business of being soft and sweet. Rarely did she intend to take one after this.

But just this once, after her reclusive genius had promised to provide for her, to care for her, to go with her and live as men and women did… It was likely the closest to a marriage a woman of her ilk would ever come – it was likely the closest to a marriage she would ever _accept_. Perhaps it would take him only days out in the world to realize that he was sadly correct – it was all too often brutish and stupid and willfully cruel – and she was naught but a fool woman with a fool dream she’d never see realized. But perhaps it wouldn’t. Perhaps they would go out and discover joy and good in the world – together, as partners, as equals. A life lived at his side that way…

No, she wouldn’t mind that at all.

She at last pulled herself from the bath to dry and dress.

There were a great number of gowns for her to choose from. They’d simply appeared for her, one every few days, starting shortly after she arrived. At first, they’d been old, shapeless things a hand-width or so short in the skirts – she was quite tall for a woman. They’d changed as the days passed – newer, more fashionable shapes, finer wool, cut more to her form, and then gowns with fine needlework, gowns with little embellishments in thread of gold, silken gowns with matching slippers…

No. She might mean to lay with a great prince, but she wouldn’t pretend to be a fine lady.

She found her travel-worn frock and her patched, uneven apron.

It was how she first came to him, an untidy wanderer, and if he would have all of her then he would have her like this as well.

* * *

“You’re dressed to leave.”

She started and fumbled the bone comb she’d been mindlessly turning over in her fingers while she awaited the sunset.

Vlad stood in the doorway once more, stripped of his cloak and his finery and wearing only a simple white shirt and black trousers in its stead, with a chalice draped with a cloth cupped in his palm. She’d thought he might look smaller without it all, but somehow he looked larger instead – there was no way to blame the impression on theatrics or illusion, there was only the towering mass of him.

“And yet,” he continued, “you have stayed.”

Lisa rose from the dressing table and walked over on bare feet to greet him. “No. I’m dressed as I came. I see you found my note.”

He held out a hand to her. “Invite me in, Lisa.”

She took it. “Oh, haven’t I done that enough already?”

That earned her a low laugh.

“Come in,” she beckoned him. “Come join me for the evening. Let’s see what we can make of it.”

“Shall I pretend to have manners?” he asked as he followed where she led him. “Or should I simply admit how I want to hitch up your skirts and bury my nose in your hair?”

A shiver battered its way up her spine. “I think you should lay down, my lord, and enjoy your drink.”

“ _Now_ I am a lord to you?”

But he still allowed her to push him to the mattress. It was very unfair, the way he moved from standing to half-reclining as though he had no substance at all.

“Shh.” She knelt down to pull at his boots. “I am an itinerant student from an unimportant village, and you are Dracula – so allow me a moment to savor my prize.”

“Ah, well,” he sighed. “How could I deny you your conqueror's spirit?”

She tossed his boots away out into the middle of the floor, one and then the other. “You won’t be in a mood to deny me anything if I have my way.”

“Now you’ve intrigued me.”

Lisa climbed onto the bed and up the long line of his legs, between his spread knees, until she could prop herself up with her forearms on his ribs. The flaw – no, no, the glorious benefit – of this plan, she realized when next she breathed, was that it left her hips and belly flush against him in the valley of his thighs and he was…

He shifted his hips to resettle himself.

She rather wished she’d stolen that peek earlier.

She drew the cloth from the goblet in his hand – oh, to keep it warm, of course – and dipped her fingers in.

“Drink,” she chided, as she painted red across his lower lip.

He lapped at her fingers with fire in his eyes. His mouth was tepid with a belly-full of blood already in him to make him warm and pliant and content. She dipped her fingers for him again and felt along the contours of those spectacular fangs as he licked her clean.

The next dollop she gathered, she smeared across her own cheek.

He groaned like she’d done him a vital injury. “ _Lisa_.”

“Come now, don’t be shy.”

She loved his mouth. He sighed with delight in her ear and she rubbed her thighs together from much the same. So deadly, so tender… He followed the streak she painted down until he was kissing at the corner of her lips once more. She shivered – his beard was not a common man’s scruff, instead well-groomed and well-oiled, and it tickled.

She turned into his kiss, open-mouthed and wanting.

He retreated from her – she whined – eyed the level of his goblet and took a deep draught.

Then, in a motion so quick he may have dissolved into shadows to make it, she was on her back in his place and he loomed over her.

He twisted the claws of one hand into the fabric of her clothing and, wearing a prideful, wicked grin, tore it away from her ‘til she was bared from breasts to navel.

Somehow, he’d not spilled a drop of his drink – yet.

He drizzled blood across her naked skin and then bent his head to lick it from over her pounding heart, like a great dark panther crouched over his prey.

“ _Vlad_ ,” she gasped.

He found the peak of her breast and teased at her nipple, catching it between the tip of his tongue and the flat, blunt edge of his near-human incisors. She might have been concerned to have his fangs at so much soft, pliable flesh – _might_ have been, but wasn’t, for she could scarcely think beyond burying her fingers in his wavy dark locks and tugging uselessly at the fabric of his shirt.

“ _Please_.”

She wasn’t even sure what she was begging for.

He sat back, pulling her halfway with him when she was slow to let go of his hair.

“It’s good to have you in my bed,” he mused.

That got her the rest of the way up. “In _your_ bed?”

He laughed. “I sent away my servants some time ago. Where else was I to put you, with the dust and cobwebs so you might lecture me again?”

She worked her fingers up under the hem of his shirt and was pleased to find that the sturdiness of his torso carried all the way down. The breadth of his shoulders may have given the appearance of a trim waist, but he was still heavy with muscle simply due to the sheer size of him.

“Oh, you might have done,” she said, pushing his shirt up. “I think you like it.”

“Mouthy woman.” He growled it in the fondest of ways.

She scratched her short, blunt, human nails lightly across his skin and his eyes closed in rapture. When he opened them again, his gaze was heavy with wicked intent.

He drank the last of the goblet and pitched the thing – engraved gold, set with jewels – carelessly away to clank and rattle across the stone floor.

His shirt followed shortly after.

“Warm,” he said, his voice soft with something like wonder, as he bent to press his face to the tender skin of her stomach and slid his hands up the ruins of her skirts to cradle her thighs. “You’re so warm.”

She choked on a gasp when one of his hands slipped around so he could work a knuckle over the slickness of her cunt. One day she— He stroked, quite sure of himself, over the apex of her slit and her whole body jerked. One day she was going to write an entire observation on the easy grace with which he moved his hands between modes of touch and used each to their best advantage.

For now, she thought maybe she would just use his hands to her best advantage.

She tugged fitfully at her skirts. “Oh, just— they’re all ruined, just tear them off.”

“Off?” He drew his hand away from her and licked at it where it glistened.

“Don’t stop and play coy now, you— ill-bred devil! Just rip them off and have me!”

Vlad chuckled darkly and sliced along the remnants of her gown, the point of his claw just grazing her skin enough to raise goose-flesh. “Oh, no, dear Lisa. I promise you, I am very well-bred.”

He flipped the ragged cloth away with a flick of his wrist and bared her completely. 

“Or… I will be.”

“You—” She sighed. “Come here.”

He crawled over her until he could lay his head on her breast, over her heartbeat. There, he closed his eyes and heaved a sigh of his own, laden with heady bliss.

Reaching his trousers with her arms was entirely impossible, not while she was pinned in this position – but she was not one to quit a thing easily. She hitched her knees up his sides and pushed at the waist of them with her heels.

“You soft old fool,” she chided, fond. “Come now. Some of us don’t have eternity.”

He raised his head up to look at her, his brows bunched together, lips turned down in a stricken little frown. “You could,” he said, voice rough with emotion.

“Oh, shhh.” She took his face in both hands and stretched up to kiss him. “Don’t fuss now.” She kissed him again and nipped at his lower lip. “Come and get to _know_ me.”

She fell back down onto the mattress and he chased after her, kissing her all the way down. When she teased him into parting his lips for her, the taste of blood still lingered on his tongue, but she didn’t mind. That was what he was, and she was a greedy woman – she could never have found such a man and only had part of him.

He shifted above her – braced his weight on one arm and reached down with the other to at last divest himself of his clothing. Despite all her teasing – and all of his – he _was_ rather well-mannered, she reflected. She couldn’t imagine wicked, worldly Vlad Dracula Țepeș pulling it out and looking for a hole to stick it in before he’d even gotten her skirts up – unlike some wastrels she could name. He moved with the glacial patience of an age beyond her reckoning.

He kicked his trousers off over the footboard.

She, on the other hand, was a quick, impulsive, mortal thing.

She broke off their kiss and wiggled down the bed to take him in hand. He gave a choked little grunt from somewhere deep in his chest as she used her fingers, just lightly, to get a measure of him.

There was a lot to handle.

A great tremor ran through his shoulders and he bowed his back until he could hide his face against her neck. It was a strange sensation to have him in hand – only barely warmer than the room and devoid of heartbeat, though she could feel that odd hum, or maybe buzz, that she sometimes felt from him in a moment a mortal man’s pulse might pick up. The pull of her fingers drew forth one of his rare deep breaths as he nosed at her jaw. He made a low noise that was more a growl than groan. She felt—

She felt teeth.

He pushed himself away from her with his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched. “We should…”

“Please don’t mention that— that _muzzle_ ,” she hissed. “It’s an insult. It’s degrading.”

“It is,” he agreed.

“Then why would you—?”

“Because I’m willing to pay that price, to feel your skin on mine.”

He rolled over to stretch out beside her, not quite touching her despite his words. She followed, tucking herself against his side, and hitched her leg up over his hip.

“Is it such a struggle?” she asked.

His hand slid over her shoulder and around her back to cradle her to him.

“A human in bliss is a tempting creature. Your heart races. Your blood vessels all dilate. Your skin is scented with it. The very composition of your blood itself is altered. We can taste your pleasure, as we taste your fear. It’s… a tangled impulse. I am a creature of thirst, and your delight has already become the foremost of my vices.”

Lisa caught one of his hands and tangled their fingers together. “Why only a bite? Why not worry about these as well.”

“Why would I? I use my hands for innumerable tasks, most of them delicate or precise work.” He stroked her palm with his thumb – the pad of his thumb, his claw barely grazing over her skin – to prove his point. “I only ever use my teeth for one thing. I’ll… learn. I’ll improve. If you’ll still have me.”

She rubbed her cheek against the cool skin of his chest. “ _If_ I’ll still have you. You old fool.”

She let him lay in silence for a moment while she traced patterns all across his skin. It was as if the earlier damage had never occurred. Marvelous. She kissed him right over the spot his heartbeat would be and felt him thrum against her lips.

“…I think you should do it,” she whispered. “Bite me.”

“Why?” His voice was cautious…

But _‘why?’_ was not _‘no.’_

“I do understand your worries – but it will do no good to feel guilt over a thing that may never happen. I _want_ you to do it. Do you want to taste me in bliss? Then drive me to it. _Please_.”

He brushed her hair from her eyes. “Does it not frighten you?”

She could see in his own eyes that he was weighing and measuring her, reevaluating. Reconsidering.

“If you truly believe you can’t without harming me—”

“It is a wound, Lisa. And I can tell that you’re fearful.”

She pressed a finger to his lips. “Shhh. I am… nervous, I admit, but it isn’t for fear of your bite. I want it. I may even need it. I think we both might.” She laughed a little. “Or maybe that’s just what I hope.”

He stroked along her spine with his big cool hand – knuckles on the way down, palm on the return. “I won’t hurt you,” he said. The words fell heavy with intent, like he was trying to speak something into being. “You’re safe with me.”

She wondered which one of them he made the promise to.

“You’ve been alone here too long, to think that bodily hurts are the wounds we humans dread most.”

“I don’t…”

“I’m a selfish woman.” She threw her arm across his broad chest and tried to pull him even closer to her, or herself even closer to him. “I want to have you. I want all of you. I want you to— I want you to love me as a man does, and I want you to love me as a vampire also, because—” Her throat was tight. Her chest clenched. Her voice broke. “I can’t bear the thought of knowing you only shallowly. I want all of you for my own.”

Vlad rolled in her grasp to face her, to fold her in his arms and hold her to his chest. Tenderly. Fiercely. As though she were infinitely precious. “As a vampire loves? I do not know that a vampire can love. But you’ve reminded me that I was a man, once. Long ago. Rain that freezes into ice is still water, and so I… I must be that man still, also. Because I do,” he whispered into the hair at the crown of her head. “I do love you. With such force that I fear it will be the end of me.”

She reached up to stroke along his jaw with both hands. She touched his teeth where his lips parted. She traced her fingertips up the points of his ears. “I love you so much that it scares me a little. But I am not scared of you. Even the parts that are unlovable, or unloving. I have those, too. Let me know all of you, Vlad, and I’ll let you know all of me.”

“Lisa…” He pulled her up the bed until he could nuzzle at her neck once more. Lightly, with exceptional care, he brushed his lips across her pulse. “I… yes. But are you truly so desperate for it?”

“I know it’s a silly thing to want, your fangs in my flesh.” She buried her fingers in his hair, dark and glossy like crows’ wings. “But I… a vampire’s consummation, and then a mortal’s consummation, and then we could go out in the world and pretend for a while that—”

He pushed back and looked up at her with some foreign emotion sparking in his eyes, fey and lovely. “Consummation? Pretend? Do you want me for your husband? Do you wish to be my wife?”

“I know,” she said slowly, “that you don’t live according to the laws of mortal men, and I don’t mind it because I have never wanted to become a— a silent, obedient accessory to a man allowed to live freely. But it would be nice – to be a set, to belong to each other. Wouldn’t it?”

He kissed her, open-mouthed and yearning. Messy. His claws tangled up in her hair. He pushed her until she was flat on her back and covered her over with his great chilled bulk and she clutched at his shoulders in delight and desperation and all the while he kissed her like he meant to devour her entirely.

“I am Vlad Dracula Țepeș,” he proclaimed gravely when he pulled back to allow her air that he didn’t need. “And I am the lord of all the shadows. I answer to no man and no god. Where I reign, the law is formed by my word alone. So think carefully before you answer me, Lisa of Lupu – is it your wish to stand beside me, and live as my wife?”

He…

She could scarcely form the words, so she kissed him again while her mind caught up to her racing heart. “As your partner. Your equal. Your companion. If that’s how you understand it, then… yes. That is what I wish.”

He stooped low to rub his face between her breasts. “If that is what you wish—” he spoke the words quietly, into her skin “—then that is what you’ll have. I will be your husband. There will be no pretending between us.”

“I— yes.” She gasped. “Vlad. Bite me, take me, please. Whichever you like. I beg you.”

“You beg me…” He pushed himself away from her and sat back on his heels. “Yet you tremble, and I don’t know at the thought of which.”

Oh, she loved him. She loved him deeply and dearly and he was a soft old fool and she was ready to scream with frustration. Blindly, she groped for one of her— his— their? – fine feather pillows and swung out wide with it to slap him across the face.

Obviously, no one had ever _dared_ before, because he sat quite still and quite dumbstruck and let it hit him.

“Are _you_ the innocent maiden in this bed?” she demanded. “Do I tremble at the thought of you? Of _course_ I do, you magnificent idiot! I have had, oh— a few unsatisfactory fumbles with limp-cocked scholars, and now I— Are you somehow _unaware_ that, when held against mortal men, you are like a destrier paraded past a field of squat little jackasses?”

That earned her one loud bark of surprised laughter before he regained control of himself and smothered it to smug – _very smug_ – chuckles.

She hit him with another pillow and he fell to the mattress, positively shaking with silent laughter.

“You—”

“Ah, there is the woman I would marry,” he managed to say through his mirth. “The harpy who banged on my door with a bloodied dagger. I think you had me even then.”

“Vlad…”

He held his arms open for her, and she fell into them. She had to.

“You truly wish for a vampire’s bite?”

“No.” She cuddled in closer. “I wish for _your_ bite. Show me how gently you will treat me through something that will hurt – that _must_ hurt, and then what else will I have to be nervous of? Some evening I might like…” she added slowly, walking her fingers up his chest, “to have you hungry and wild, and then we may need to lock your fearsome fangs away. But not tonight. Leave me blissful. Let yourself have this.”

With a little sigh, he rolled her over onto her back and held her pinned there with one large hand that spanned her whole waist. “A vampire’s _consummation_ ,” he muttered. Then, louder, more for her to hear— “If this will settle you, then I will master myself – _somehow_ – and do what you ask. Only remember, you _did_ ask.”

She expected him to nose at her neck some more, lick at her pulse – she felt herself flush from the mere thought. What he did was draw her arm away to lay it out straight beside her.

“Relax,” he chided. “Or I will never find the place.” He felt along her shoulder, massaging at the muscle. “Relax.”

“I thought…”

“Your neck? Do you not slaughter your meat that way? Your life would be measured in moments.” He readjusted the angle of her arm. “Relax.”

She willed the tension to leave her. She willed herself not to be embarrassed by her mistake. His touch was cool on her skin, in a way that continued to be intriguing if nothing else.

As if he sensed the change in her – he likely did – he pinched up a large fold of her flesh, at a spot where he could just lift the skin without grabbing at the muscle underneath.

“There. Don’t move.”

His cheek brushed against hers and then—

The shock and burn of his bite was like being pierced by hot arrows. His teeth carved their way in— in— into the place between skin and muscle, she realized distantly, with exceptional precision. Somewhere through the pain, she could feel them hard and unyielding against – inside – the meat of her shoulder.

And then his hand came up to cradle her cheek.

He released his hold, and as his fangs slid free a gush of hot blood followed. He groaned from deep in his chest.

He pulled her up into his arms, where she hung limply. It was not good. She wanted it to be good, but it was not good and—

He kissed at the area around the wound. His mouth, which she knew was only slightly chill, felt like ice against the heat of the rising inflammation – felt soothing. Then came that hot-cold tingle from before.

On his knees, he carried her back up the bed to lay her against the pillows. His tongue pressed beneath his bite in a way that drew forth more blood and it… it was _starting_ to feel good. His lips found spots that drove shivers through her. He lapped at the flow of blood both diligently and delicately. If she made a pained noise, he pushed at her harder with his magic and caused a burst of tingles

His teeth slid over her skin, but they did not pierce her further.

She moaned, this time not in pain, as he made a detour to lick up her pulse.

He pressed his leg between hers, thigh up hard and unyielding against her cunt, and when she rolled her hips out of reflex, it seemed she felt the shock of pleasure through all the channels of her blood.

He nipped at her earlobe, just the flat teeth between his great fangs, and she rubbed herself against his leg like a bitch in heat.

“I am sorry,” he murmured into the hair at her temple. “I tried to—”

“The bite hurts,” she whispered, dazed. “The bite hurts, but the feeding is good.”

“Lisa…”

She turned her head to look at him. He stared back, lips parted, teeth all smeared with red from her. Something warm dribbled down her collarbone – she was still bleeding sluggishly.

“Come here.” She tugged at him – by the arm, by the shoulders, with his beard pinched between her fingers. “Don’t stop now.”

“I—”

She rolled her hips against his thigh and poked at her shoulder, coaxing another dribble of blood to slide free. “Listen to me carefully, Vlad Țepeș. The bite is agony, but the feeding is bliss. Don’t stop now.”

When he didn’t move, she dragged her fingers through her own blood this time, to smear it across his lips. He grunted like she’d stabbed him in the ribs, but opened his mouth for her all the same.

“Must I beg you?” she asked.

One of his hands curled under her thigh. “No. No, you need not beg.”

He lifted her hips as if her weight were nothing to him, dragged her down the bed to meet his body with her own, and yet – the soft press of his hand, the tenderness in his eyes… he looked at her, touched her, as if she were everything.

She felt him slide against her, one long slow stroke up the slickness at the crease of her thighs, and she squirmed in his grasp.

He arched his back, bowed his head, folded himself down somehow to draw his tongue up the red rivulet down the curve of her breast. “May I, truly?” he asked as he mouthed at his bite.

“Yes, yes,” she gasped.

He sealed his mouth over the punctures and _pulled_ , hard, and at the same time she felt that hot-cold tingle as his magic _pushed_ and— her legs trembled, her toes curled, she cried out as her vision dipped into hazy grey and—

As she came back to awareness, she noticed first that he was kissing at tears gathered in the corners of her eyes, and second, that she had never felt such a stretch before. He was – oh – he was seated deep, and very still.

“Clever,” she said when she at last recovered enough to do more than pant.

“I have my moments.”

She reached to brush the hair from his face and he caught her hand, dragging it down her body until her fingers met the slick point of their joining. A little noise of confused delight escaped her as she felt where he disappeared into her body, as if she might better comprehend the fullness and weight if examined from the outside.

He withdrew and she couldn’t prevent her eyelids fluttering closed. It was… so much. A slow roll of his hips and he pressed in again. She might have squeaked, she wasn’t certain. She stroked herself, just a light touch.

“That’s it,” he breathed. “Perfect.”

He began in earnest, and things like time or reality rapidly lost meaning to her. There was only the rocking of their hips and the play of her fingers and his low voice murmuring praise she didn’t bother to comprehend, only to bask in the sound of it.

She gasped and shuddered once.

He kept going.

Again. Again? Why bother to count. She closed her eyes and fell limp, exhausted entirely and yet thrilled at the promise of more.

Finally, he collapsed – just caught himself with his forearm before he half crushed her – and snarled like an actual animal above her, a sound no human could make,

One last, desperate jerk of his hips and a resonating thud from deep in his chest and he fell to the mattress beside her. He curled his body around hers and she wanted to object – she was sweaty and embarrassingly sloppy between her legs, she knew it…

But there was a pounding rhythm behind his ribs that drew her in. A heartbeat, faint and fading fast. She put her ear to it to listen in wonder.

“Mm, Lisa…” he mumbled – lovingly, dozily – and curled closer around her.

If he were a mortal, he’d be intolerably warm. She fumbled for the blanket of furs, pleased that he was not. She tucked it around his towering frame.

She forced herself to leave the bed. There were things that must be done – close the shutters, clean herself up…

Vlad reached for her and dragged her close the moment she returned. He slid a leg in between hers and buried his nose in her hair. She rested her head against the spot his heartbeat had been and allowed herself to drift.

A good feast and a good fuck had made her ferocious night-beast pliant and cuddly.

Fortunate, then, that she was in the mood to be held, at least for a while, until some other appetite reared up and made its demands known. For food, for knowledge, for love…

A human was a ravenous creature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My outline for this chapter was a continually evolving dumpster fire, containing such 'gems' as [horny muzzled vampire hour?] and [what is a man? a miserable little pile of fetishes!] and frankly if I had to see that with my own eyes multiple times, then you had to see it at least once.
> 
> Hope you enjoyed the ride.
> 
> Lisa sure did.


End file.
